


we lose track of everyone, even ourselves

by catwing



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwing/pseuds/catwing
Summary: Strangelove and Hal have a late night mother-son chat in a dream/afterlife interdimensional rift, as one does.





	we lose track of everyone, even ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure this doesn't work at all the very premise is sooo self-indulgent. But what else is fanfiction for. Thank you to briarglades for looking over this for me!
> 
> Warning: None of it is discussed directly, but "Hal's backstory" is pretty implicitly relevant to this. As in, probably don't read if you don't want to think about All Of That.

 

Hal opens his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling. He’s lying in a small bedroom, on top of the covers on a neatly made bed. He stands up and looks around, and his eyes are drawn to a mirror in the corner of the room. The reflection looking back at him is, unmistakably, his own teenage self, gangly and round-faced. Probably about fifteen or sixteen. Oh god, he thinks. That can’t mean anything good.

The door to the bedroom is ajar, with light coming through it. He goes through and finds himself in a kitchen. It’s a nice kitchen, he thinks. It has big windows that take up half the walls, and a huge, black, starry sky beyond them. There’s a marble countertop in the center of the room, surrounded by high, wicker-backed chairs. In one of these chairs, on the far side of the counter from him, sits a woman with silver hair. She looks... maybe forty, maybe a little younger. She’s wearing a white t-shirt, with a high neckline like a men’s shirt, and a light purple bathrobe. She’s engrossed in a book. A nice porcelain teacup, with a saucer, sits at her elbow.

When the woman looks up and sees him, she seems surprised, but not alarmed.

“Hal,” she says, after a brief moment.

Something strange happened, Hal registers, in the moment that just passed, when she recognized him. There was a shifting, as if for a split second he was Hal-at-four, not fifteen, rubbing his eyes and wanting his mother to get him a glass of water and tuck him back into bed. He had totally forgotten what that was like, to be so young that just finding your mother in the house sets everything in the world right again. It must have been awful, when she was just gone. Maybe that has something to do with why his earliest memories are from seven or eight.

“What are you doing here, darling?” She asks, and sets down her book.

“I’m... honestly not sure,” he says. Then, even though he knows the answer beyond a shadow of a doubt, “Are you my mother?”

“Of course I am,” she says, brusquely. Not offended, exactly, just like she thinks it’s a silly question. He hesitates, staring at her for a moment, not knowing what to say. It suddenly occurs to him that he might be intruding. This is her home, presumably. He didn’t exactly knock.

“Well, sit down,” she says, gesturing at the chairs. “I’ll fix you a cup of tea.”

He climbs into the one opposite her place. His feet dangle.

He can’t stop staring at her. Even while pouring a cup of tea in her pajamas, she has a direct, no-nonsense way about her. Like none of the cups in her kitchen drawer had better take it into their heads to inconvenience her. Hal doesn’t know how they can possibly be related.

She sets his tea down in front of him with a clink, (it’s another fancy porcelain one, the same as hers,) and settled herself back in her chair. He takes a sip. It’s very bitter, without any cream or sugar in it.

“I’ve been reading this wonderful book, Hal,” she tells him. “Mémoires d'Hadrien, by Marguerite Yourcenar. Have you heard of it?” He shakes his head. “I never did get around to it when I was alive, which is such a shame, because I have this friend from university, still alive as far as I _know_ , who I think would really enjoy it.”

“Oh,” Hal says. Then, a bit guiltily, “I don’t read very much.”

“Oh dear,” she says. “Not even novels?”

“I always really hated English class as a kid,” he says, apologetically. It’s a strange thing to say, because he’s fifteen, but it’s true, he always dreaded them. It was all hypothesizing, there was never a real right answer. The only way to do well was to talk in class, to explain your thought process with the whole room’s eyes on you. The very idea was torture, at the time, although he did get better at it in college.

“Oh, well,” she says, as if this explains it. “The American education system is hopeless. I never would have sent you to- You went to public school?” He nods. “I never would have sent you to public school, if it had been up to me. You were so bright, even as a baby.” Her voice warms, and she gives him a look so unabashedly affectionate he feels the urge to shrink away from it.

Hal watches her expound on the pros and cons of private schools in America and in Britain, feeling wildly intimidated. The way she states her opinions is completely unequivocal, as if from the moment the words leave her mouth, there’s no _possibility_ of any other stance being legitimate. If she was your mother, he thinks, and she was angry with you, she would just tell you so. There wouldn’t be any guesswork involved. It’s sort of terrifying to imagine.

The strange thing is, he likes her. He liked her instantly, from the moment he walked in the room. In the few pictures of his mother he’d seen as a child she always looked kind of severe and distant. The Mona Lisa always reminded him of those pictures, which he knew was weird, and never said out loud to anyone. What those photographs didn’t capture at all, he thinks, now, is... well, her personality. How forthright she is, how smart and self-assured.

“The funny thing is,” she’s saying, “I never did have a relationship with another girl in school, not even at university, even though I must have known by the time I was in primary school.” Hal blinks at her, not immediately able to make sense of this.

“Oh, did your father not tell you that I was a lesbian?” she says, when she sees his face. She sounds mildly annoyed, nothing more. “Typical of him. Ego driven.”

Hal doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t want to say that his dad never told him anything about her at all, or that for most of his life this information would have scared the living daylights out of him. Well, maybe not as a child. It would have been okay, if he had just always known it.

He takes a sip of tea, trying to act like he’s not rattled.

He finds himself imagining what it would have been like, to be sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, fifteen or sixteen. To have said, the way other people do, “Mom, I think I might be gay.”

He doesn’t know what comes over him, especially since this isn’t real, he’s not fifteen anymore, this isn’t _his_ kitchen table. But for some reason he says the words out loud, and they come from the mouth of him-at-fifteen, all nervous and shaky.

She smiles at him, not looking particularly taken aback. “That’s wonderful, darling,” she says.

That doesn’t really fix anything. It doesn’t undo anything. This isn’t his childhood. But he lets out a long breath and pretends, just for a minute.

“I did wonder, even when you were a baby,” she says. “You were such a sweet little boy, sensitive.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he blurts out, “I have a kid.” Even though that ruins it, totally muddles the chronology. “I mean, kind of. Me and... We’re raising a little girl. She doesn’t have any other parents.”

“Oh, Hal. That’s _wonderful_ ,” she says again, and this time she sounds truly delighted. “What did you call her?”

“Sunny,” he says, smiling a little himself. “Her mother named her.”

She just smiles at him, fondly, and it takes him a second to realize there are tears in her eyes. He instantly panics. He’s only known her a few minutes, but the idea of her crying already seems totally inconceivable to him.

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry, I didn’t think-” he starts.

“Oh, Hal, no,” she says, and dabs at her eyes with the edge of her bathrobe. “I’m _happy_ for you. I just wish I could meet her, that’s all.”

She sniffs once, and then gives a sensible little shake of the head, as if saying, _well, that’s enough of that_. Then, she takes a sip of tea. Hal stares at her in awe. He’s never had the ability to pull himself together like that. He could try, but he’d usually be back to crying two minutes later. It’s practically superhuman that when she looks up from her tea again, her eyes aren’t even red. Maybe the rules are different for her.

“Parenthood is a wonderful thing,” she says, warmly. “For obvious reasons, I never imagined I would have children when I was young. But now, I can’t imagine my life without you.”

It’s such a nice thing to say. Hal tries to smile at her, and it’s a little wobbly. Other people crying has always made him weepy.

“You were a wonderful baby,” she says, smiling to herself. “You were born with a full head of hair, did you know that?” He shakes his head. They never talked about... anything before her death, he and his Dad. He feels stupid, how much he wants to hear more, as if it really matters what kind of baby he was.

“You were very fussy,” she says, still smiling, as though the memory of a screeching infant is a pleasant one. It’s a lot more distant for her, Hal guesses. “I used to say to your father, ‘Hal comes right out and tells you how he feels, you could learn something from him.’” She chuckles in clear, genuine amusement, even though the idea of talking to his dad like that makes Hal’s blood run cold.

“He didn’t think it was very funny,” she continues. “He really had no sense of humor about himself.” She shrugs dismissively, like, _not my problem_.

Hal hesitates, a sudden, familiar stab of guilt going through him. “Have you been... I mean, can you... see us? Alive people? What we’re doing?”

She sighs, a little discontentedly. “No. That’s not how it works, I’m afraid.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and then she looks over and peers at him, closely. He fidgets, a horrible wave of self consciousness sweeping over him under her gaze. He has no idea how _this_ works, if she can see right into his brain, or...

“You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?” she says, sadly.

Hal tries to correct her, to make her understand that it’s not really like that, that he only has himself to blame for most of it, but before he can quite get the words out he feels a sob well up in his chest, insistent and unavoidable. Her tone is just so gentle, so sympathetic.

It’s ridiculous that _this_ , out of everything, is what makes him lose it, just bury his face in his arms and start sobbing like a little kid. His mother doesn’t say anything. After a moment, she reaches over the counter and rests her hand on the back of his head. They sit like that quite some time. Her only movement is to comb her fingers lightly through his hair.

When he finally cries himself out and sits up, she says, “Drink your tea, dear.”

She gets up and goes into another room, and Hal wonders if that’s it, if this is over now. But a moment later she comes back through the door, and she’s brought him a tissue. He wipes his eyes, and blows his nose. It’s gross, but well, it’s only his Mom.

“Life can be so unfair, that way,” she says, contemplatively. “Your mother had a terribly difficult life.”

“My... mother?” he says, suddenly completely lost. She doesn’t sound like she means herself.

“Yes. She’s around here, somewhere,” Strangelove says, and looks, even more confusingly, up at the ceiling.

“Anyway, you found someone?” she says, before he can ask for any clarification, and for a second he doesn’t know what she’s talking about _now_. “A nice boy? Or, man, I suppose.”

Oh. “Well...Yes...” He finds himself turning red, which is so embarrassing. Is he still fifteen? It doesn’t really feel like it, but there are no mirrors in this room to check.

“And he treats you well?” she says, a little suspiciously. He almost laughs, for some reason, that this is what she’s worried about, of all things.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, firmly. He has no idea what to say to her about Snake, how to explain... She’s his _mother_. He does laugh a little, then. “He’s a very good person,” he says, which sounds really dumb.

When he looks up at her, she’s giving him a shrewd, almost amused look. “Well,” she says, and takes a sip of tea. “That’s alright, then.”

“Yeah,” he says, and drinks his tea, to have something to do with his hands. The bitter taste is actually starting to grow on him.

“It’s morning, I think,” she says, and it’s still the dead of night, out the window, so she must mean... “Time for you to be getting back.”

“Ah.”

“You may not remember, when you wake up,” she muses, looking a little sad. “It may be... too much of a transgression. There might be some metaphysical law in violation, I’m really not sure.”

Hal doesn’t know what to make of that, but...

“I hope I remember,” he says, in a small voice, and all of a sudden he’s four again, small and anxious and just wanting his mother.

“I do too, dear,” she says, and she says it the way you talk to a little kid, as if there’s nothing strange about it, him being four. “You look like you’re nearly ready for bed,” she adds, and he nods. His eyelids are heavy.

She gets up and crosses to him, puts her hands under her arms and hoists him onto her hip, even though he’s really too big to be carried. He’s incredibly sleepy, too sleepy to hold his head up any longer, and he lets it rest against her shoulder. He feels so safe, so comforted by the solid pressure of her arm, holding him securely to her side as she clears the cups from the kitchen table. He knows he’s going to fall asleep. He fights it, doesn’t want to go, wants to cling to her, somehow...

 

Strangelove is just turning to go into the bedroom, to tuck him in, when she realizes Hal is gone. Just gone.

“Oh,” she says aloud, standing alone in the middle of the kitchen. It’s a terrible feeling, for a moment, a loss all over again. Then she straightens up, gives herself a little shake. It’s temporary, she reminds herself. Anything to do with life. It’s all only temporary.

She goes to one window and opens it a crack before sitting down at the counter. A warm, dry summer night breeze blows through the room, and her book is waiting for her.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from this Memoirs of Hadrian quote: “We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than those of the life of Hadrian.” 
> 
> Sorry this is very pretentious, I just think Strangelove would have pretentious taste in novels. What can I do. :/


End file.
